Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
The freedom to be who you want to be...
Friday, February 25, 2011
Cross-posted from the
Google Public Policy Blog
Peter Steiner’s iconic “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”
cartoon
may have been drawn in jest - but his point was deadly serious, as recent events in the Middle East and North Africa have shown. In reality, as the web has developed - with users anywhere able to post a blog, share photos with friends and family or “broadcast” events they witness online - the issue of identity has become increasingly important.
So we’ve been thinking about the different ways people choose to identify themselves (or not) when they’re using Google - in particular how identification can be helpful or even necessary for certain services, while optional or unnecessary for others. Attribution can be very important, but pseudonyms and anonymity are also an established part of many cultures - for good reason.
When it comes to Google services, we support three types of use: unidentified, pseudonymous and identified. And each mode has its own particular user benefits.
Unidentified
. Sometimes you want to use the web without having your online activity tied to your identity, or even a pseudonym—for example, when you’re researching a medical condition or searching for that perfect gift for a special someone. When you’re not logged into your Google Account (or if you never signed up for one), that’s how you’ll be using our services. While we need to keep information like IP addresses and cookies to provide the service, we don’t link that information to an individual account when you are logged out.
Pseudonymous
. Using a pseudonym has been one of the great benefits of the Internet, because it has enabled people to express themselves freely—they may be in physical danger, looking for help, or have a condition they don’t want people to know about. People in these circumstances may need a consistent identity, but one that is not linked to their offline self. You can use pseudonyms to upload videos in YouTube or post to Blogger.
Identified
. There are many times you want to share information with people and have them know who you really are. Some products such as Google Checkout rely on this type of identity assurance and require that you identify yourself to use the service. There may be other times when it’s more desirable to be identified than not, for example if you want to be part of a community action project you may ask, “How do I know these other people I see online really are community members?”
Equally as important as giving users the freedom to be who they want to be is ensuring they know exactly what mode they’re in when using Google’s services. So recently we updated the top navigation bar on many of our Google services to make this even clearer. In the upper right hand corner of these Google pages, you will see an indicator of which account, if any, you are signed into.
We’re also looking at other ways to make this more transparent for users. While some of our products will be better suited to just one or two of those modes, depending on what they’re designed to do, we believe all three modes have a home at Google.
Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering
Investing in news innovation in Europe
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Journalism is changing fast. And as news businesses experiment with new ways of creating and delivering journalism in the digital age, Google is keen to play its part on the technology side. Over the last year, we’ve been partnering with publishers around the world to
develop
technological
solutions
- including, most recently,
One Pass
- to find new and engaging ways of presenting stories online and to generate greater revenues.
As well as our focus on technological experimentation, we’re also investing at the grassroots level.
Last October
we announced that we would be giving $5m in grants to non-profit organisations working on developing new approaches to journalism. At that time, we allocated around 40% of the total fund to the
Knight Foundation
in the US.
Today, we awarded a
$2.7 million grant
to the International Press Institute, based in Vienna, which will be used to sponsor the
IPI News Innovation Contest
. The contest seeks to find and fund breakthrough ideas that will have a lasting impact on the future of digital news in communities across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Grants will be awarded to both non-profit and for-profit organisations working on digital journalism initiatives, including open-source and mobile technology projects created by or for journalists and distributed in the public interest. From today until June 1st,
the IPI will invite proposals
from around the region for projects devoted to online innovation in journalism, new economic models for news and training in digital reporting.
The IPI has a long tradition of working on innovation in journalism, freedom of expression and other important issues. We’re sure they’ll be able to find and advance some great digital journalism projects over the next couple of years - and we encourage anyone with innovative ideas, large or small, to
apply for a grant
from the IPI. In the meantime, we’ll continue to work with the news industry to help develop new projects, products and experiments that make it possible for journalism to thrive online.
Posted by Peter Barron, Director of External Relations, Google EMEA
Data-driven policy-making
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Everyone loves a good
statistic
. And if you’re a policymaker, parliamentary assistant or academic, statistics - vital for evidence-based policy-making - are your bread and butter.
Over the last two years, we’ve made it easier to find, explore and understand more than
27 datasets
through search and via clear, colourful visualisations using the
Google Public Data Explorer
. You can find and analyse over 300 data metrics provided by public institutions such as Eurostat (eg:
EU inflation rates
), the OECD (labour productivity), the IMF (
government debt levels
), UNECE (
gender balance in parliaments
) and many others.
Yesterday, we made the Public Data Explorer even more useful by enabling you to visualise
your data
. If your organisation produces statistical reports on its key performance indicators, tracks financial or societal trends or conducts large-scale surveys, you can now benefit from the same sort of powerful, animated visualisations that we provide today with our existing datasets.
To make this possible, we’ve developed a
new data format
that makes visualisation easy, and have provided an interface for anyone to
upload
their datasets. Once imported, a dataset can be visualized in the Public Data Explorer, embedded in external websites, and shared with others. This does of course require some technical skills, but we’ve built upon existing open standards and a simple user interface to make things as easy as possible.
Our hope is that even more useful statistics can come to life through Public Data Explorer visualisations - and that we can help you realise the value of data in making informed, data-driven decisions.
Posted by Omar Benjelloun, Technical Lead, Google Public Data Team
A simple way for publishers to manage paid access online
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
At
Humboldt University
in Berlin today, Eric Schmidt announced
Google One Pass
, a service that lets publishers set their own prices and terms for their digital content. With Google One Pass, publishers can maintain direct relationships with their customers and give readers access to digital content across websites and mobile apps.
Readers who purchase from a One Pass publisher can access their content on tablets, smartphones and websites using a single sign-on with an email and password. And readers don’t have to re-subscribe in order to access their content on new devices.
With One Pass, publishers can customize how and when they charge for content while experimenting with different models to see what works best for them—offering subscriptions, metered access, ‘freemium’ content or even single articles for sale from their websites or mobile apps. The service also lets publishers give existing print subscribers free (or discounted) access to digital content. We take care of the rest, including payments technology handled via Google Checkout.
Our goal is to provide an open and flexible platform that furthers our commitment to support publishers, journalism and access to quality content. Like
First Click Free
,
Fast Flip
and
Living Stories
, this is another initiative developed to enable publishers to promote and distribute digital content.
German publishers
Axel Springer AG
, Focus Online (
Tomorrow Focus
) and
Stern.de
joined Eric at Humboldt University today as some of our first One Pass partners. Other publishers already signed up include
La Presse
,
Media General
, Bonnier’s
Popular Science
,
Prisa
and
Rust Communications
.
Google One Pass is currently available for publishers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US. We hope to develop further partnerships with publishers in coming months and look forward to extending One Pass to other countries too. For more information, please take a look at the
One Pass website
.
Posted by Lee Shirani, director, business product management, Google Commerce
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Investing in news innovation in Europe
Data-driven policy-making
A simple way for publishers to manage paid access ...
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